COMING SOON! My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America
In My Tax Dollars, Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good.
Though taxpaying is often portrayed as dull and technical, exposure to collective rituals, civic education, propaganda, and protest transforms the practice for many Americans into either a sacred rite of citizenship or a profane threat to what they hold dear. These sacred and profane meanings can apply to the act of taxpaying itself or to the specific uses of tax dollars. Despite intense disagreement about these meanings, politically diverse Americans engaged in both taxpaying and tax resistance valorize the individual taxpayer and “my tax dollars.”
Braunstein explores the profound implications of this meaning making for tax consent, the legitimacy of the tax system, and citizens’ broader understandings of their political relationships. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.
The book and related writing focuses especially on the following groups and projects:
RELATED WRITING
Braunstein, Ruth. 2024. "Toward a Cultural Sociology of Taxation." Socio-Economic Review, 22(2): 931–952.
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "Anti-IRS fearmongering, ‘law and order’ and the GOP,” New York Daily News
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "How the threat of ‘taxpayer-funded abortion’ is being used to mobilize conservative religious voters,” The Conversation
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "How did Republican fearmongering about an IRS ‘shadow army’ go mainstream?" The Guardian
Braunstein, Ruth. 2019. "Making Budgets Moral Again." Series on "The Religious Left: Memory, Trajectory, Relevance." The Immanent Frame.
ADVANCED PRAISE
“The book is a masterclass on weaving together different kinds of sources, from Supreme Court decisions to ethnography to fiction books to Johnny Cash lyrics. Bringing together an extraordinary range of evidence, Braunstein examines how and why taxation is viewed as sacred, profane, or mundane.”—Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution
“This book is at once a sophisticated theoretical work, a really novel empirical treatment about a very controversial social fact, and remarkably well written. I am confident it will become a standard text in economic and cultural sociology.”—Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
In My Tax Dollars, Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good.
Though taxpaying is often portrayed as dull and technical, exposure to collective rituals, civic education, propaganda, and protest transforms the practice for many Americans into either a sacred rite of citizenship or a profane threat to what they hold dear. These sacred and profane meanings can apply to the act of taxpaying itself or to the specific uses of tax dollars. Despite intense disagreement about these meanings, politically diverse Americans engaged in both taxpaying and tax resistance valorize the individual taxpayer and “my tax dollars.”
Braunstein explores the profound implications of this meaning making for tax consent, the legitimacy of the tax system, and citizens’ broader understandings of their political relationships. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.
The book and related writing focuses especially on the following groups and projects:
- war tax resisters
- anti-abortion activists against "taxpayer funded abortion"
- anti-government tax defiers
- projects to promote taxpaying
RELATED WRITING
Braunstein, Ruth. 2024. "Toward a Cultural Sociology of Taxation." Socio-Economic Review, 22(2): 931–952.
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "Anti-IRS fearmongering, ‘law and order’ and the GOP,” New York Daily News
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "How the threat of ‘taxpayer-funded abortion’ is being used to mobilize conservative religious voters,” The Conversation
Braunstein, Ruth. 2022. "How did Republican fearmongering about an IRS ‘shadow army’ go mainstream?" The Guardian
Braunstein, Ruth. 2019. "Making Budgets Moral Again." Series on "The Religious Left: Memory, Trajectory, Relevance." The Immanent Frame.
ADVANCED PRAISE
“The book is a masterclass on weaving together different kinds of sources, from Supreme Court decisions to ethnography to fiction books to Johnny Cash lyrics. Bringing together an extraordinary range of evidence, Braunstein examines how and why taxation is viewed as sacred, profane, or mundane.”—Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution
“This book is at once a sophisticated theoretical work, a really novel empirical treatment about a very controversial social fact, and remarkably well written. I am confident it will become a standard text in economic and cultural sociology.”—Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
